Originally Posted by David Norman
Oh damn, it's too late at night to give the laugh that post deserves.

Or as wife reminded me recently that my oldest grew up watching LD.

When he was 2-3yo and used to watch Mary Poppins constantly and when the side break came he would frown and turn to Mom looking all confused and sad while pointing
at the screen. Gently reassured that it going around to the other side -- he began to ask in a meek voice at first "Roun n roun to udder side??" watching the little arrow spinning
on the screen and then gaining confidence rapidly over a couple month began dancing and singing "Round and round to the other side!" and clapping with great enthusiasm
when the movie resumed. I think he though that Turtle on Side 4 was his pet turtle for a long time -- "Turtle's sleeping Daddy, Shhhh!"

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As someone else who came of age with LD (I was 8 when we got our first player after some friends of ours turned us on to the format), I love that story.

Enough is enough, Disney. No more evasions or excuses. We DEMAND the release Song of the South on Blu-ray along with the uncut version of Bedknobs and Broomsticks on Blu-ray. I am going to boycott The Walt Disney Company until then. And while you're at it, PLEASE stop dropping DVD/laserdisc extras from Blu-ray releases of other films.

Supporter

My little dancing kid is now 6'3" and Junior in College. I can just about relate word for word with Mike Frezon's Toy Story 3 story.

I do understand Marco's post and there are still a few DVD/BR that I get an uneasy feeling about sometimes and realize that subconsciously
I was expecting a break or pause. I get a kick out of it more than I'd like to admit. The oversized Fantasia was my first LD purchase with
multiple sides so the upcoming BluRay will be quite trying to watch without giggling.

The huge SOM LD boxset is still just flat gorgeous to look at, but what;s on the screen is just so far above where those first Fox Widescreen
LD started (almost a VHS quality transfers) that got steadily better with each release. I remember thinking how great the SE Boxset SOM was back
in the day and now seeing what is available only 15yrs later -- order of magnitudes improvement.

Watched the Blu-Ray tonight with my mom, who had to bite her tongue not to sing along with every song -- she's a HUGE Rodgers & Hammerstein fan. Perhaps the best looking transfer of a pre-digital intermediate film I've ever seen. The level of detail, right from the establishing shots where you can see the ripples of the waves on the lakes through the detailed mosaics in the Von Trapp ballroom to the crowd scenes at the concert near the end, was absolutely phenomenal. While you can easily tell which scenes used diffusion filters, the quality that resulted was painterly, not soft. The colors were absolutely mind blowing, and the DTS 7.1 track (I haven't had a chance to listen to the original 4.0 track yet) was clear as a bell.

I had a smile on my face the whole time, and the three hours positively flew by. This is the kind of experience home theater is all about.

Supporter

Had so much new to watch last night that I'm afraid I couldn't make myself do a straight-through on any one thing. But even in skipping around and sampling, The Sound of Music blew me away. But not like it did when seeing the roadshow engagement back in my tender years. No sir, much more than that. More than ever. This is one of those times in which viewing something through adult eyes is: priceless.

The other hero of this film is screenwriter Ernest Lehman. He was attached to the film before Wise, and I believe he was responsible for convincing Wise to do the film after William Wyler didn't work out. Conventional wisdom in Hollywood was that this was too saccharine a project to touch. From the beginning, Lehman believed this would make a really good film.

Burt Lancaster said (when he heard Lehman was first working on the script) "Gee, you must really need the money." That was pretty much the attitude at the time.

Guest

Were there two sound mixes for this in 1965? I ask because the sound of Julie Andrews slapping her apron during the opening number was missing in the last release and is still missing. I wouldn't mention it but I was so used to hearing it for years. It's even there during the 1973 Julie Andrews special when she shows a clip from the film. Surely they would have used it here?

Reviewer

Watched the movie last night, I've seen it just under 200 times in theaters and on every home video release, and was blown away. Finally they did justice to my all-time favorite movie. I watched the short on the sound restoration which was quite fascinating, to find that the original music session tapes were damaged and couldn't be used before, but with new technology they were able to fix and use them, plus it plays a bit of the dialogue-only track in that short, without the music, so they had all of the elements.

RAH, I have a question for you. Since Fox has put isolated scores on many movies like the Mel Brooks Collection and Planet of the Apes films, since they did indeed correct the damage to the session music stems of The Sound of Music (as seen on the sound restoration short), why didn't they put an isolated score track on the disc in DTS MA? Could it be perhaps because it would have reduced the bitrate of the movie using more space? Or could there be another reason. I am one of those people that love to listen to the orchestra alone and marvel in Irwin's orchestrations.Also, if they did not use the 1st generation music stems, then what is the isolated score on the previous DVD's between Robert Wise's commentary? A music/effects track which would be 2nd generation?

I saw Sound of music over 130 times in the theaters on a big screen over the years.

This aint it. Shadow detail does NOT look good to me, The colors are way off what they were in the theater.
The picture starts way too blue, then often goes too red on thei ndoor scenes.
In the opening number, on thel ast dvd, the sound of Julie slapping her apron was missing. incredibly,it is still gone on the english tracks but is on all of the foregn tracks and themusic and effects track has it too.
The foreign tracks have a nice high end, completely missing from both of the english tracks. Not good. I was less than impressed with this new transfer. Think I'll stick with the fortieth anniversary edition.
The new extras are not a new doc, but a hunt and peck thinkg that quickly grows tiresome.
save your money for the 50th anniversay edition, which I am sure that, even now, they are planning.

Guest

Is this release really that bad? So, the apron slap WAS in the original 70mm release? Why is it missing then? The sound effects are not all missing from the song so why would that one be? Maybe the effects track was used for the foreign releases which is why the effect is on that track?

Well, if the tracks were remixed, odds are that there are some subtle differences. However, unlike the problems that the Rocky Horror Picture Show BD has (and even those aren't truly bad), this really isn't a big problem, for me personally.